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Aviation History
2004
2004-09 - 0403.PDF
Surveillance COMMON SOLUTION The US Army will choose a bidder to provide a next- generation intelligence platform for itself and the US Navy. Who will be the winner? STEPHEN TRIMBLE / WASHINGTON DC After six years on the drawing boards, a new intelligence air craft for the US Army and US Navy called the Aerial Common Sensor (ACS) may be less than one week from advancing to the develop ment stage. Competing bids from Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are in and a $680 million contract for sys tem development and demonstration (SDD) is expected to be awarded shortly after 22 April. Meanwhile, programme offi cials must also resolve a $6 billion gap in lifecycle cost projections and overcome an early development setback for one of the aircraft's two primary sensors. The ACS platform, which will be fielded by the army in 2009 as the RC-20, is a choice between the Embraer ERJ-145, offered by Lockheed Martin, and the Gulfstream G450, offered by Northrop Grumman. The ACS is designed to collect and process real-time intelligence simulta neously from multiple onboard sensors, including ground moving target indica tor/synthetic aperture radar (GMTI/SAR), electrical optical/infrared (EO/IR) and packages designed to detect signals and sig natures. The army planned to choose a single contractor team in November 2001, but the schedule slipped twice as new obstacles appeared. In 2002, the army narrowed the competition to Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, eliminating a bid by L-3 Communications. Since then, L-3 has joined Lockheed Martin's team as the sys tem integrator. The first blow to the programme came almost three years ago when the army can celled the BAE Systems low-band subsystem (LBSS) that was to be the primary commu nications intelligence (COMINT) suite for ACS. The development of a suitable alterna tive still remains one of the programme's top technical challenges. COMINT systems detect voice and data transmissions that are helpful for identifying key targets that include leadership positions. However, this task has been complicated in recent years by the spread of wireless voice and text com munications devices. Losing LBSS forced the RC-20 programme planners to extend development timelines for a new COMINT system, a delay that has increased costs. Another setback emerged last year when the army and analysts from the Office of the Secretary of Defense produced widely different estimates for the lifecycle costs of the ACS fleet, prompting a further review to narrow the gap between the estimates. That caused the army to delay the selec tion of a single contractor team for SDD from last November to this month. Industry sources suggest that the army may not be ready to announce a decision for several more weeks, although the 22 April deadline still stands. Navy requirement The row over the cost estimates came as programme planners faced the challenge of inserting a navy requirement for 14-19 air craft into the programme. The navy's Multi- mission Maritime Aircraft (MMA) was intended to replace both the Lockheed Martin P-3 Orion anti-submarine warfare aircraft and the electronic intelligence EP-3 Aries fleet. Last June, the navy decided to transfer the EP-3 requirement from the MMA to the less expensive ACS. This deci sion makes the ACS a multi-service plat form, sometimes referred to now as the Joint ACS. For the army, which plans to buy 38 air craft, the ACS fleet's primary job is to iden tify and pinpoint the locations of enemy emitters, then feed the data to a ground sta tion to co-ordinate attacks by various weapon systems. In this role, ACS is to replace both a Northrop Grumman-modi- fied de Havilland Canada Dash 7 called the RC-7 Airborne Reconnaissance Low and a Beech King Air with a TRW (now Northrop Grumman) sensor system called the RC-12 Guardrail/Common Sensor. Baseline sensor requirements for ACS call for a 350km (190nm) range for signals detection, a 20km imagery intelligence capability and a SAR/GMTI that can track targets up to 300km away. Eventually, the ACS missions systems should be able to control offboard unmanned sensors, although this requirement is not included in the baseline configuration. More than a replacement, ACS also marks a new step in the evolution of the army's airborne intelligence platforms. The original RC-12 lacks a capability for onboard data processing, causing a time- consuming step in the military's "sensor- to-shooter" cycle. Instead, the RC-12's sen sors transmit imagery and signals intelligence data to a ground station for processing, and it is then relayed as target ing information to strike units. To speed things up, an upgraded RC-12 called System 2 was introduced in 2000 with onboard data correlation systems, allowing the ground station to instantly feed target ing information to the waiting weapons platforms. The ACS has been designed to improve upon System 2 in two ways. First, nearly all the data collected from the aircraft's multi ple intelligence sensors will be analysed and automatically converted into usable 40 13-19 APRIL 2004 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL www.fliqhtinternational.coim
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